Understanding How Trump Sees the World

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Nadia, thank you so much for joining me. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation.

NADIA SCHADLOW

Me too, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So you, of course, served as deputy national security adviser during the first Trump administration, in 2017 and 2018, and in that capacity you helped drive and really crystallize what may be the closest thing to a paradigm shift in U.S. foreign policy in the last couple of decades: the return of great power competition as the organizing principle of U.S. strategy, as it was put in the 2017 National Security Strategy, which you were the principal author of.

How would you summarize that new paradigm that you saw take hold in the first Trump administration, and to what extent has it really persisted across administrations and parties? The Biden administration had a very different view of how you wage a great power competition, but in the basic outlines as you sketched them in 2017, there does seem to be a lot of continuity across administrations.

NADIA SCHADLOW

Yeah, I mean, I think at that time in 2017, there were essentially three to five main themes that came together in that strategy. One was that the world was a competitive place. Two was that China was our main strategic competitor and that it was okay to call China out and to describe China as such. A third theme was that power mattered in the international system and that we were not all necessarily converging toward the happy end state that had been the assumption behind globalization. And fourth, the United States could be a catalyst—that we weren't going to be able to necessarily do everything, nor should we do everything, but we could catalyze change.

I think those were four themes that come out through that strategy, but they were themes that existed when President [Donald] Trump was first campaigning for office. They were themes that were in all of his speeches from the time he got into the White House through the next year. A lot of times people try to sort of create daylight, and I always say, “Well, go back to his speeches, look at those speeches, and you’ll see that there’s actually not much daylight between the National Security Strategy that emerged and what he was saying and doing during that first year in the White House.”

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You wrote an essay for Foreign Affairs in 2020, a few months before the election, called “The End of American Illusion,” and you wrote in that piece that, and I’m quoting you here, “If a Democrat wins the White House, he will likely require convincing that rivalry is an unalterable feature of the international system and that it would be a grave mistake to return to the premises of a bygone era.” You must have been pleasantly surprised by what you saw by the Biden strategy in that regard.

NADIA SCHADLOW

Yeah, I mean I think the Biden strategy recognized China as a strategic competitor, too, and a rival, and its 2022 strategy stated that clearly. There were two things going on, with a lot of visits to China, with [Treasury Secretary] Janet Yellen at various times sort of pushing back on the idea that decoupling was something we needed to do in strategic sectors. The messages were pretty confusing at times. Now, having said that, we’re seeing confusing messages now, too, so confusion is bipartisan. And the relationship obviously is pretty complex with China.

But I do think there was a fundamental difference in the Biden administration in that they elevated climate and progress on climate to such a degree that I think they were willing to consider and make trade-offs with China in that area. I think a key difference between Republicans and Democrats is, Democrats tend to just have more faith in multilateral processes. The more multilateral, the better. And I think Republicans, including me, sort of have a lot more doubt about that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

We will come back to the confusion of current U.S. policy or current U.S. strategy in a few minutes, but I want to go back to one really interesting feature of the essay you wrote in 2020, which I think tried to flesh out some of the thinking behind the National Security Strategy. One feature of thinking in the previous era of foreign policy that you were critical of was this idea that there was kind of an end state—that there would be this kind of liberal evolution in other political systems that would allow us to get past competition and come to a sort of end state of geopolitics.

We’ve had a different version of that end state debate more recently, which is not so much about our rivals becoming more like us, which was one of the assumptions of 1990s thinking, but is really about a kind of more aggressive use of American power against rivals. And I think one very prominent version of this was a piece in our pages by your former colleague, Matt Pottinger, along with Mike Gallagher, a Republican congressman, in which they argued that we really need to make it a goal of U.S. policy to change the nature of power in China specifically—to take a much more proactive and forward-leaning view of American policy in that regard. Do you see that as a useful end state or do you kind of come back to this idea that we really have to think of competition as a kind of permanent condition of geopolitics and our policy?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I’m more of the latter. There is no real end state, I think. I really like how Richard Nixon formulated his ideas, that there’s really no such thing as a static peace. Your adversary is doing something; you have to do something in return. My focus has been on: we have an awful lot to do to protect ourselves, to improve our defenses, to deter, to do all the things we need to do. I think there are things we can do on the margins to weaken China, but I’m focusing on the front end of the activities that I mentioned: protecting ourselves, deterring, to the degree we can use alliances in productive ways to contain China or to push back against its global sort of hegemonic ambitions. Those are the things that I focus on.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Another striking feature of competition today that was not quite as prominent or not nearly so prominent if you go back even five or six years is how much coordination we’ve seen among not just Russia and China, but also North Korea and Iran, with occasional appearances from other stray rogues like Venezuela or Myanmar or others. Without going down the rabbit hole of whether this is or isn’t an axis, and if it is an axis, if it’s an axis of upheaval or autocracies or revisionists or whatever else, I’m curious if the formation of this grouping and the degree of coordination came as a surprise to you, and if so, if it was avoidable. Are there kind of mistakes that American policy made that allowed or drove this coalescence? You noted in a more recent piece for Foreign Affairs written just before the election that this really does raise new kinds of risks and policy dilemmas for U.S. foreign policy.

NADIA SCHADLOW

Well, I think it certainly does raise more risk. I think it’s an easier proposition that they have. It’s easier to sow chaos, it’s easier to be disruptive. They’re not coordinating because they’re ideologically aligned, but they are aligned in wanting to create dilemmas and problems for the United States and our allies. And they’ve done a pretty good job. That cooperation had a material impact on what’s happening in the Middle East, in terms of Iran and how it’s acting and the cooperation, frankly, between Russia and Iran, and then obviously also in Europe and China, and North Korea’s assistance to Russia in its prosecution of the war against Ukraine.

So we’ve seen plenty of examples about how this has created problems for us—and also real, material problems. They can produce a ton of ammunition. They can send their poor young soldiers from North Korea to Ukraine to fight and to die. I mean, they can actually do a lot of material things, too. And I think a constant theme over the past few years has been the difficulty that we have had as a country and as the West in producing stuff, in getting stuff done, in moving quickly on timelines. And all of that has a big impact. That’s a different set of problems, but I certainly think that those countries have created dilemmas for us, will continue to create dilemmas for us, and I think will continue to complicate sort of war planning and deterrence and all those things that our [Department of Defense] and defense leaders do.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

If you look at U.S. foreign policy over the last seven or eight years, are there things you would do differently in retrospect in order to prevent that formation from becoming such a problem?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I don’t know how much agency we have to do that prevention. That line of thinking can almost be hubristic, right? Because it’s a sense of that we can say we can prevent those relationships from occurring. I mean, it’s been quite difficult. It was quite difficult to get maximum pressure to fundamentally work, or change North Korea’s trajectory, even though it was a good thing to do, and I think the first Trump administration was the first to really try systematically to impose this maximum pressure regime on North Korea. But it’s very hard for us to dictate how other relatively powerful leaders act. I think we can cause problems, we can make things difficult. We can, if we’re creative, create difficulties ourselves for these other powers, and I think we could be much better at that. And that maybe gets me to back where Matt and Mike Gallagher—what they were discussing in their article.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

There is, I think, a somewhat more sober version of this that you see in parts of the administration that really, I think, is shaping the Ukraine debate, at least as it’s happening in parts of the administration. And you see people who see U.S. support for Ukraine and the war in Ukraine more generally as either a waste or a diversion from where the real focus of U.S. foreign policy needs to be, whether that’s a matter of throwing good money after bad and a hopeless cause or bailing out a Europe that still doesn’t spend enough on defense and should spend more.

How do you see Ukraine fitting into global competition—this question of diversion of resources and attention versus credibility? And advocates of Ukraine who would say, look, the best outcome is a peace on terms that Ukraine needs to accept, but second best, and certainly better than a peace that is favorable to Russia, is if Ukrainians want to continue fighting, then the U.S. spending $10 billion a year—which is a lot of money, but maybe one percent of total U.S. global security spending—that’s not such a bad thing if it’s tying down Russia and draining Russian power. So you can kind of see this debate coming in various ways, but I’m interested in how you see Ukraine fitting into this global picture, given how parts of the Trump administration seem to see it as a distraction.

NADIA SCHADLOW

I don’t think Ukraine is a distraction at all, and I think it is hard to make the argument that it is, because I think China is looking at what’s happening in Ukraine and learning a lot from it. While some might see these theaters as disconnected, I think there’s plenty of evidence to show that our adversaries or other countries don’t see them as disconnected—that you see American power exerted in a certain way, how allies respond, how the United States responds. I think all of that is connected.

Having said that, I think the question now is, how do you get to an end state of stability in the middle of Europe that does not advantage Russia, that allows Ukraine to rebuild, reconstitute, grow? There was an emerging technology industry there. I mean, there was hope in Ukraine, as much as they had internal political problems, of course, and corruption and all of those things. But I think there’s an opportunity now to rebuild Ukraine in a way that is the best possible Ukraine we can get to. That would be a good outcome.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

As you try to understand the twists and turns of Ukraine policy and the relationship between the United States and Russia, between the United States and Ukraine and what it means for the war, do you see a U.S. strategy emerging? How do you understand the various moves and surprises we’ve seen in the last 100 days or so?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I mean, I think the way the White House is thinking, I don’t know, but my sense from reading is that they would like to see an end to the war that’s on fair terms to Ukraine, that doesn’t set up an opportunity for Russia to reinvade Ukraine. I think President Trump has seen how difficult it is to deal with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and I think Putin has shown his hand in that way, and I think that has created a different set of dynamics in those negotiations—positive I think for Ukraine.

But I think we do learn from the series of events that every time President Trump says something, it elicits a reaction, like a huge reaction, and then three days later you might be confronted with a different set of circumstances. So it began with this is all going to favor Putin absolutely, to now we’re in a situation where clearly the White House is talking to [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky more. I think there are lots of discussions going on. There’s progress on the minerals deal. It’s not perfect, but there’s progress on it. So you see a lot of positive dynamics, I think, where early on, what was it, the infamous Oval Office meeting, I think things changed pretty quickly.

But I think it’s incumbent upon us to provide a little bit of context and calm. Sometimes there’s just always this tendency to react to every single thing the president says without maybe thinking through how something might change in a couple of days. A dynamic might change, maybe he’s setting conditions for a negotiation. I think he sees things much more in terms of bilateral leverage, setting conditions, eliciting reactions, just to actually then create a new negotiating stance. So it’s pretty dynamic.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It’s pretty easy to imagine a pretty nightmarish scenario from a Ukrainian perspective and from the perspective of the global American interests that you laid out earlier. If you project forward six months or a year kind of understanding the president and the way he approaches these issues more than most of us do, what’s a relatively positive scenario, if you look forward a bit? How do you think this may go in a way that will bring a relatively good outcome for Ukraine?

NADIA SCHADLOW

Yeah, I mean, well first I’ll start and say the United States never began its support for Ukraine, and neither did the Europeans, with any statements, in 2022, throughout the year, throughout the incrementalism that characterized our provision of aid, European provision of aid. I mean, it was a constant going back and forth. It was constantly played out in the media about which weapons would we provide and which not. There was not a prevailing sense of argument about what we wanted the weapons for. Was it to retake the Donbas? Was it to retake Crimea? Was it to provide a defensive line so that the Russians could not proceed any further?

There was never an articulation of an operational concept for what would the win look like, and as a result, what kinds of weapons packages did you need to make that win most likely? I didn’t see that discussion, and it was an uncomfortable one, because I don’t think people wanted to have the discussion. The kinds of weapons that you would have provided to the Ukrainians early on and all at once, you could make significant gains and then maybe hold those gains—that’s not what happened.

I think we’re not in much of a different situation today. I mean, I think we want a Ukraine that can rebuild itself, restore itself economically, become, to the degree it can, an economic and technological powerhouse in Europe, and where Russia can’t re-attack or reinvade Ukraine or continue to take more territory. Now, within that, the negotiations about territory, about what the Ukrainians want to hold on to, what they want to retake, I think that will come as part of the negotiations. But I think in the end it’s a Ukraine that can look forward and be a stable and productive country in the heart of Europe.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So let’s turn fully to the rather confusing question of what the second term Trump foreign policy really is. We’re a little more than 100 days of it in, so it has not fully taken shape. But we can read it in various ways, and one reading of it is that the president himself—and this very much relates to the work you did in 2017 and 2018 and the pieces you’ve written for Foreign Affairs—one reading of Trump is that he doesn’t really believe in great power competition. That he intuitively buys that spheres of influence are the natural order of geopolitics and that ultimately Taiwan is going to be taken over by Beijing, that if Putin wants a swathe of Ukraine, there’s not much we can do or should do to prevent that, and similar, that the United States should have similar sway in our own hemisphere. And that a better way of running things is a degree of coordination globally, with permissiveness in each power’s own geography. Even if it’s not quite a great power concert, it has some resemblance to it.

Do you see anything to that description of Trump and how he views the world, and to the extent that’s true, is that a useful framework for U.S. foreign policy or is there any value to that?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I go back and forth. I mean, I think there are a couple of things that are sort of creating this architecture that the current administration is building. One is a reshaping of the global trading system, right? So I think we can agree on that. Now, I think some people argue that it doesn’t make sense, or that certain elements of it don’t make sense, or there isn’t an architecture to it. I disagree. I mean, there is, right? It’s a sense that trade deficits matter. I mean, you might not agree with it, some economists don’t agree with it, but others do. It’s a reshaping of a global trading system toward a new type of end state. So I specifically think that the constant use of terms like trade war is not helpful because that implies that you’re kind of going back to something that was, that this is just sort of this tactical series of moves, and we’re going back to something. No, I don’t think we are. I think we’re going towards something differently, and I think there’s so much resistance to it and so many countries that are frustrated with the president that very few are saying, “Let’s roll up our sleeves. Let’s work together. Let’s figure out where we want to go in this new architecture of trade.”

I think in terms of overall power, I think the president wants a balance of power in that he doesn’t want to see Putin or [Chinese leader Xi Jinping] or other countries take advantage of the United States. So he might not put it that way, but in the end, an architecture that allows the United States to have the freedom of maneuver it needs to operate, to be treated fairly—all of those things I think require a sense of global involvement and staying involved. Again, it’s not going to be a win, but it’s going to be a constant sense of keeping the peace, adjusting, pushing back, negotiating when needed.

The reason I keep going back to Nixon, because I think that period—I’ve written a piece on that—the period from the 1970s is quite similar. It was about, in Nixon’s terms, “shared responsibility.” He meant he wanted the allies to do more—that they were rich enough after World War II to do more. “Peace through strength,” which was his phrase, not Reagan’s. I learned that, I didn’t know that. And you can see, obviously, Trump ended up using that phrase both in the first National Security Strategy and now. And third, be open to negotiations with anyone. So in that sense, it’s very Trumpy, right?

I think it’s absolutely fine to talk to anyone you want to internationally—North Koreans, Russians, Chinese—but just go in with your eyes wide open and go in with a realistic sense. I think it’s hard to dismiss the way that Xi sees the world for himself and for the [Chinese Communist Party (CCP)] and for China. And so I think at some point, even if the president and his team want to remain just focused in this hemisphere, they’re going to run up against that.

And certainly we’ve seen that already with Panama. I actually thought what happened there was very interesting and quite positive. We spent years and years as a country complaining about [the Belt and Road Initiative] and how successful that had been in terms of, from China’s interests—obviously not local interests, but from the perspective of China. Really did nothing effective about it, and then Trump comes in and all of a sudden you have this really interesting new set of dynamics where the American private sector comes in, changes the dynamics, potentially changes all of those dynamics. But what do you see now? You see China, you see the CCP putting a hold on that transaction by that Hong Kong-based seller, Hutchinson, right? So I think that’s really interesting, and I think that also kind of shows, I think, how the White House also sees that—in a sense of, here’s this deal we wanted to make that was going along just fine, and all of a sudden it does bump up against what China wants.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Can you imagine Trump making a concession on Taiwan in the negotiation with Xi Jinping really saying, “Look, you can do what you want in your own sphere and in return give us concessions on ports in Panama or other things in the Western Hemisphere”? Or for the sake of a trade deal, you can imagine that Trump might get frustrated with the Taiwanese the same way he’s been frustrated with the Ukrainians at various points. Is that kind of global deal-making part of this formula?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I don’t know. I mean, I think that strategic ambiguity has been for many, many years the U.S. position vis-à-vis Taiwan. I actually think that’s fine. I think that provides us with leeway, it provides us with flexibility. It creates dilemmas for China because it creates a sense of uncertainty about what we’ll do. And I think Trump is going to continue that. It’s pretty hard to have 90-some percent of the leading edge chips being made in Taiwan and basically cutting deals with that in play. It’s a huge amount of leverage you’re giving China. But I think Taiwan too needs to increase its defense spending, work with the United States, all the things that we as a country, and the Biden administration was saying as well, I think Trump is going to emphasize that too. I’m sure he probably already has. That’s no big insight. But I think he’s going to take advantage of the strategic ambiguity to the utmost to just keep everyone on their toes, which he likes to do.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So accepting that we are just 100 days in to the administration, or a little more than 100 days into the administration at this point, I think it’s hard to really predict what the next National Security Strategy would look like. But I think you can see different currents or different schools of thought taking shape in the administration. I thought reading the Signal chat about strikes on the Houthis that the Atlantic reported on, has of course become notorious for other reasons, understandably, but it also was kind of fascinating to see the debates taking place in this stark and clipped form, these kind of cross-pressures of needing to address this problem in the Middle East, but not wanting to bail out the Europeans, as I think the vice president said, and having other priorities. How do you understand the different currents, the fault lines, in this administration that will shape the National Security Strategy as it comes into being in the next several months?

NADIA SCHADLOW

Look, I think there are clearly, like in any administration, differences of opinion about both big issues and small issues. But I can see some pretty clear pillars in the next strategy that are likely to emerge. Similar to the trade point I was making, the new global trading architecture; one that values more manufacturing in the United States, and that emphasizes the importance of resiliency in the United States. I think the debate now, in terms of debates we’re seeing, is how much of that is linked to allies and partners, and there are different debates about that. I think another element of a new [National Security Strategy] would be clearly energy dominance. So a reassertion of American energy dominance, but also willingness to think about alternative forms of energy in a serious way and having a full range of alternatives and diversification and the leverage that gives us. It’s not going to be a renewable focused strategy, it will be one where you’ll see fission, you’ll see attention to fusion, you’ll see obviously natural gas, but diversification.

I think you’ll see an emphasis on sources of American power. So I think then that’s where some of the disagreements come in. Sources of American power, okay, focus internally, focus on securing our border, focus on improving schools, getting better outcomes in certain areas. So that’s what I mean by sort of the internal sources of American power. And I think you’ll see a sense still of pride—I mean, President Trump has used the term American exceptionalism. I think he thinks we are an exceptional nation. I think he doesn’t think, though, that we have to do everything around the world because of that. So I think he still is sort of a city on the hill kind of person where he sees the United States as a good example for the rest of the world. Now, critics, I know what they’re going to say, but I think that those are themes that I could see in the next strategy coming out. And obviously there are lots of sub-themes too.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So a lot of those elements were, in fact, in the Biden National Security Strategy, if you just swapped out natural gas for green energy technology and leadership on green energy, but a lot of those other elements are quite similar.

NADIA SCHADLOW

Okay, but Dan, I’ll push back. I don’t think so at all. I think that there’s no new trading architecture. There wasn’t the same sense of energy dominance. There is a real sense, fundamental difference, that climate was an existential threat to the United States, and that is a completely different view than the current administration. And I think the sources of American power, every president wants the United States to be powerful, but politics is about the how. Politics is a very different idea about how to advance that power, how to grow that power. So that’s where all the disagreements come in.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So one of those disagreements is on alliances and what it means to strengthen alliances. You wrote shortly before the election that quoting you here, “A Trump administration would need to recognize that part of an overmatch strategy,” which is the proposal you were laying out, “is having more and better friends than one’s adversaries.” The reading of the Trump administration thus far is that it’s been much more focused on challenging allies than on strengthening those alliances. Do you have concerns about the way it’s gone about that or do you see a kind of plan here that you think will yield a new kind of alliances that will, in fact, better serve the United States if again we project forward several months?

NADIA SCHADLOW

Yeah, I’m more of the latter. I realize my European friends are sensitive to this, but I think it has been a long, long time where many American presidents have said: more of the burden sharing. Even Trump one. And I think being really tough on Europe to say, “You have got to develop these capabilities,” and not taking those relationships for granted, I think, can end up in a stronger place for our alliances. I think, having said that, I recognize there’s a lot of emotion in their responses to President Trump and not just the Europeans. I think we need to step back from that and think about what is good for our countries overall. I think it would be a mistake for the Europeans to really pursue a path of strategic autonomy. I think that would weaken the transatlantic alliance.

So I think there are ways that we can work through this, but I think we need to do so stepping back a bit from the emotionalism of it all. And thinking about what outcomes do we want? We want stronger industrial bases. We want better trading relationships with fewer barriers. Identify those specific outcomes. We want countries that care about the values of the West and want to stand up for those values of the West—which is what Vice President Vance was saying in his speech. Obviously that speech upset many, many people, but fundamentally it was about Europeans themselves should care also about the values that make up the West and that we’re all sort of linked by. So we can work through this, but we need leaders on both sides to come together and say, “We’re willing to do this.”

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So let me ask a version of the question I asked on Ukraine. There’s been lots of consideration of how alliances, both in Europe and in Asia, could decay and deteriorate in ways that are damaging to both sides over the next few years. If you project forward to the latter part of this term, what would be the path to getting to stronger alliances? What will happen between now and then to get us to that outcome that you would see as advantageous?

NADIA SCHADLOW

Well, a key component to a stronger alliance are actual capabilities. So we have got to actually develop the capabilities, whether it’s to communicate better, literally—operational tactical communications with our Japanese friends and our militaries, and to be integrated at that level so that we can train together and work together, to new operational plans in NATO for defending the Baltics and working on that, challenges that Baltic leaders have put out for themselves and are really working hard on, we can and should be helping them. I think in the end, those alignments will matter. I mean, China right now is still disadvantaged by the fact that we have allies and partners and alliances, and if you take the GDP of all of us, it’s still bigger than China and all of those facts.

So I think we’ll get there, but we actually—it’s not just a paper process. It’s actually measuring things now in terms of capabilities. And that means we have to take this component of time seriously. That’s why I’m much more sympathetic to these more bilateral approaches to getting things done. It doesn’t mean the outcome is not bigger than that, but we can’t spend years and years and years trying to get to these outcomes anymore. Speed matters to build up those capabilities. That will be key. I think critics in the administration or those who are more skeptical of alliances or more on the isolationist side can point to a lot of things on paper and say, “Well, what does this really mean? This is just on paper. We’ve been saying this for ten years, 15 years.” We actually need to change that dynamic.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

As you apply that to Asia, how do you see or where do you see the need for further development of the alliance structure in Asia? I mean, I think there’s been much less attention and much less anxiety when it comes to the Asian allies, but I think even people in the Biden administration—you saw this in a piece by Kurt Campbell and Rush Doshi in our pages recently—see the need to really take those alliances to the next level. What does that look like to you as you look at competition with China especially?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I think in terms of Asia, we’re in a good place with Japan. Japan’s done a huge amount over the past few years. Initially Trump’s relationship with Prime Minister [Shinzo] Abe was, I think, really important in jump-starting that. A lot of progress continued under the Biden administration. I think with Australia now, AUKUS will be very important—but again, it goes back to my previous point about making AUKUS real, in terms of improved capabilities. And the timelines are years and years and years away. And some of these problems, in terms of cooperating and working on programs together and joint weapons programs and things that are important for deterrence, the obstacles are all obstacles that we’re creating. A lot of them are U.S., but some of them may be Australian in terms of sharing information—we’re working still under Cold War constraints, which are ridiculous, and we’ve known this.

I think there’s been a very positive executive order that came out a few weeks ago relating to foreign military sales and direct sales and reducing the regulatory environment around that. These have been issues that have been problems for 15 years, 20 years even. And they’re problems of our own making. I sometimes divide the world up into the problems that we create for ourselves and the problems that are externally driven.

So I think we want progress in terms of AUKUS, good relationships with the Philippines. We have productive relationships with the South Koreans. I mean, that relationship in Trump one was fraught at times. I haven’t seen much recently on those discussions or the degree to which discussions are happening, but I’m positive. But I think it’s the same thing. It’s a sense that we need to create those real capabilities.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Nadia, let me pick up on that one question of the future of Asian alliances. I mean, there’s been lots of discussion of extended deterrence in Asia and whether Japan and South Korea especially might or even should develop a nuclear weapons capability of their own. Do you see that as a real possibility, and if so, is it a good one or a dangerous one from a U.S. perspective?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I think it would be a long time coming, right? But I think the problem of a more proliferated world is a dangerous one. The more nuclear weapons there are around the world—it’s not just an issue of extended deterrence in Asia, it’s also one that’s been discussed in Europe, in the Middle East, other countries. Surely it’s crossing their mind. So I think extended deterrence and the problems of proliferation will be problems that the current administration will need to work on and will be faced with. And I think overall, more nuclear weapons is probably not a good thing for stability.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So I want to go to the piece that you wrote shortly before the election, in which you laid out your vision of the future of American strategy, which you described as an “overmatch strategy.” What would that look like, and to what extent do you see pieces of that coming into place in the first months of the Trump administration?

NADIA SCHADLOW

Yeah, I’m not so sure I was right. I mean, more I wrote it thinking about overmatch as a concept to get us to do better in these key domains, that we had been thinking about competition for eight years—so the four years of Trump, the competitive theme I think sort of existed through Biden as well to various degrees. And it’s not really getting us to a lot of better outcomes in a lot of places.

Overmatch means you actually have to do better. You have to get to a better place in your adversaries. And it’s interesting because we just saw today, there’s an interesting article about how China’s Made in 2025 plan, actually they’ve achieved overmatch in key areas. I don’t think it uses that term, but they’ve also certainly caught up a lot. So the overmatch idea was more of a challenge to say, what would it look like if we could actually do better, be stronger in certain areas, be actually more competitive in certain areas? So it was a way to get people to think about using that as the measure, which leads you to a different place than if you’re just thinking about competition.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And when you look at military capacity especially, how far from that are we at this point? How much more do we need to do to reach a point where you think we would feel like we have that advantage?

NADIA SCHADLOW

I think there are debates on this, but most defense experts that I speak to feel that we are lagging in our ability to produce things at scale should we be faced with a sustained conflict. So the problem is not so much the technology. We have great technology, although even in those areas, there are debates about—China’s done really well in areas related to hypersonics and building up its nuclear arsenal, and the technology there is very, very good too. But our problem is one of scale and the ability to produce lots of cheaper things more quickly. So we’ve been saying that we’re great innovators for many, many years. We have not yet cracked the code on production at scale.

I mean, we have ideas how to do that. My colleagues and I at Hudson, Bryan Clark and Dan Patt, just produced a study which argued that we have to use our commercial manufacturing base more effectively, to produce munitions. So you’re creating factories that are not just designed for [Defense Department] products. You’re using factories and manufacturing plants—modern ones that are producing modern consumer machines by day and munitions by night. And the technology is there, the software overlaps are pretty remarkable. But to do that, you have to change the way the Defense Department operates—and that’s clearly one of the key priorities of the current team—and hopefully they’ll drive that fast because we don’t have much more time.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

There’s also, of course, the civilian side of U.S. power. In your 2020 essay, you noted that, quote, “Precisely because so much of today’s international competition happens below the threshold of military conflict, civilian agencies need to take the lead in maintaining order and shaping a landscape favorable to U.S. interests and values.”

I think the reaction from much of the foreign policy community in seeing cutbacks to the State Department and the end of USAID and the end, or at least dramatic rollback, in most kinds of forms of U.S. assistance, has been to kind of interpret that as taking away these tools of U.S. power and competition. Do you have a different reading of that? Would you reassure people that there’s a different theory here, or is that simply a kind of mistaken impulse by parts of the administration thus far?

NADIA SCHADLOW

No, I’m actually sympathetic to what they’ve tried to do. So this will also make some listeners probably pretty fussy. First, it is completely legitimate that tools of American foreign policy—economic tools, humanitarian tools—are within the State Department, right? In fact, I think many Americans would be surprised that agencies often consider themselves as independent actors. It’s a legitimate debate to have, and I side on the side of, I have no problem with those entities being under the State Department. They are tools of American foreign policy.

Second, there’s a difference between what an architecture is to help promote democracy, to help support local democratic movements, to help countries improve their agricultural sector and all of those things, and humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid, to me, is generally in times of earthquakes and tornadoes and need. You do humanitarian aid for natural disasters. Those are different operational concepts than how you support local nascent democratic movements, how you create free enterprise in countries, how you help to create successful societies. Again, we can catalyze those things. And a successful society—that’s a term that was used in the 2017 strategy, it was one that I especially liked. I think it’s just a good term because you can start with some arguments about what are the key components of a successful society.

So I think USAID was ripe for reform. I mean, you can argue in the way that it happened, and now the challenge will be what kinds of capabilities should we be building in these softer instruments of American power, and what are the concepts behind them? Do you help countries establish security first before economic growth? Is that a precursor to economic growth? A lot of people would say yes. Do you train people in terms of values or job training, or do you build roads for them, because that’s tangible? And I think you can make an argument that we sort of have gone back and forth in that for years and years and years.

And I know some countries we’ve been giving aid to for 25, 30 years with absolutely no measurable improvements or outcomes. Should we continue to do that, or should you focus on countries where there’s more chance of positive change, and then that country becomes a light in a region—it becomes an example for the rest of the region? I think these are legitimate debates and discussions, and I think those issues are sort of getting lost again in the emotion of how it was done. So I guess I would say I do see it a slightly different way.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Let me close on an extremely nerdy question. There’s been, I think, confusion when it comes to put it mildly, policymaking process in this administration. It took a while last time around for something like a process come into shape. That’s true of every administration. As you watch the current team trying to shape U.S. strategy and make policy, do you see a process starting to take shape, starting to come into effect? Of course, we just had a change in national security adviser, and Marco Rubio probably won’t have a ton of time to be sitting in the West Wing and the situation room leading meetings, but how do you see process in this administration and how is it similar or different from the one you were part of six or seven years ago?

NADIA SCHADLOW

My focus is going to be and has been and I think it should be for many people, is on outcome. So I’m going to measure things less on process and more on outcomes. So let’s see where we are in terms of some of the issues that we’ve discussed over the past hour, past 40 minutes, to see where we are on outcomes. Because you can point to a lot of processes over the past 20 years in American foreign policy, processes that didn’t get to outcomes that we need to be at. So I’m going to focus on outcomes. I’m going to ask for measures, look for measures, ask intern teams to find measures, and hopefully we’ll see some improved outcomes over the next year.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Nadia, both your 2020 essay and your 2024 piece are well worth reading, as of course is the 2017 National Security Strategy, which is still quite an accurate description, I think, of where U.S. foreign policy is across administrations. So thank you for those pieces, thanks for joining me, and I will look forward to the next one before too long, I hope.

NADIA SCHADLOW

Thanks, Dan, for this opportunity. I really enjoyed the conversation, and thank you so much.